[Priest] State of Discipline 4.1.0

Same stuff, different thread!
Okay, it's that 4.1 time again, and a lot's happened since 4.0.6 went live.

What do we have?

Shield's mana cost has been increased substantially, but this is already live.

Inner Will and Inner Fire now last until cancelled, which amounts to absolutely nothing.

Dispel Magic now only removes one buff when cast offensively, down from two.

Shield's duration has been nerfed to 15 seconds. Pre-shielding exists, but not en-masse anymore (unless you want to bring a second Discipline Priest, and overheal everything)

Aegis' duration has been increased. These lasting a little longer should help make them more useful, despite the precarious balance of heal:shield ratio varying from fight to fight.

Barrier (as well as other raid-wide cooldowns) had its cooldown changed to 3 minutes, but also its effect reduced.

The Hymns now have 100% pushback protection.

Holy Fire is now active on the Glyph of Divine Accuracy. It also triggers the effects of Evangelism and Atonement, and has had its damage increased to do 30% more than Smite. While this is an amazing increase, it also has the unwanted side effect of making the Glyph of Smite mandatory.Edit:

Strength of Soul now reduces any Weakened Soul on the target, not just yours.

Also:

The Tier 11 Set bonus no longer requires Weakened Soul to be on the target to gain your Spirit bonus.

Overall, healing-wise, I'd say discipline merely was 'nerfed' slightly come this patch/change. The direct change to PW:S duration is significant, which means that at most, based on GCD limitations/etc, you can squeeze in 12-13 PW:S before the duration of the first wears off, which is significant on raid-wide damage fights (especially in bursts) and calculating for this damage accordingly (ie: Heroic Atramedes). However, I think the change is minimal in regards to the fact that PW:S's cost is so high, that the return of using 15 shields to pre-shield a raid isn't mana effective, and will lead to a higher cumulative drain in mana and a loss of thoroughput in regards to a long fight duration. Ultimately, the mana cost of PW:S has already dissuaded disc priests from spamming shield currently (at least in early heroic gear in my experience) in large groups/active numbers past 5/10 people. This change is merely a pvp fluff change, which I find will effect us very little (bar preshielding) in a raid environment.

The change to barrier is very, very iffy. Just as was expected, guilds and gimmicks as per the first raiding tier of cataclysm has promoted/forced guilds to use PW:B as a cheap/effective way to reduce incoming damage on a small group of people/entire raid. The catch? The raid/group has to be within the area of effect to receive the benefit of the cooldown, and bar gimmics (ie: feud phases on H:Chimaeron), the skill is near useless, due to raids being forced to spread out due to one inconvenient debuff or another. Overall, I disagree with the change. I think that out of all the cooldowns that any class has, PW:B is the single most unique, and best-designed abilities for a cooldown, if it was given more opportunities to be used, instead of situations that force it, via raid stacking/etc.

As for the changes to Aegis, that's a mere bonus on top of our weak gains from mastery. Ultimately, Aegis is, and forever will be, an RNG component of Disc that I never really approved of, especially with crit being so low at earlier tiers this expansion, and the fact that the only way to guarantee a proc is to cast a relatively expensive group heal which heals/pseudoheals for relatively little, as compared to a holy priest. Overall, a very hum-drum change.

Hymn changes are excellent, and much needed. Suffering knockback from AoE pulses (ie: H:Chimaeron) is rather silly, and the fact that casting the channeled skill to regain mana takes the priest out of direct combat for so long makes this a great change. Same thing with Divine Hymn getting knockbacked early, and making the 8minute cooldown next to useless.

The holy fire change is much needed, allowing disc priests to actually consider using more than just smite, and even incorporating the smite glyph into their arsenal. While Atonement healing is very clutchy, I've found in most situations it's a great skill to help your raid beat an enrage timer, and a great way to conserve mana/maintain a mana level while healing+dpsing simultaneously. Something was always very clunky about being used to HF->Smite, and just smiting a boss with PI instead of warming up with the usual HF precast.

The tier change is excellent. The fact that holy priests will almost ALWAYS be in an active chakra presence (especially come 4.1), made the set so much more powerful for them, and weak towards disc, especially if you consider some fights (for example, early pull on H:Halfus) where penance's total cumulative healing doesn't heal tanks enough, and you're stucking using GH and a random clutch penance. I feel as though the removal on the requirement makes the set a good bit better, and actually worth investing in for the extra regen, especially since gracex3+penance is a very good ability in a pinch.

Overall, I'd say disc is still losing out this patch. The direct nerf to PW:B is signficant, as where the nerf to PW:S duration is tolerable (in the aspect of my position as a disc priest) without manhandling our output too much. However, I still standby the fact that the direct change to PW:B and the continued nerfing of the single talent that our tree is mostly centered around is a great way for blizzard to discourage players from playing the spec, as it requires so much finesse to play properly now, that playing holy is just as efficient, and far 'easier' in regards to playstyle, and a lot less mana-constraining. More continued direct nerfs to PW:S will ultimately end up killing the spec to the point where PW:S just isn't desirable anymore, or just so limited, that going a hybrid Holy/Disc spec will lead to far better overall performance because of the throughput of the holy tree with the benefit of spammable shields (albeit weaker) but with far greater regen.

they got buffed, i'll sadly be back to shield spamming (15 vrs 30 seconds is meaningless) before you say it isn't viable I did it last night on maloriak for shits and giggles, yup 58% of my healing was shield spam, I dominated, finished with mana and I went out of my way to keep up pennance 4pc pom and actually cast POH. 4healed omni on 25 then went,, yup back to disc for H chimeron. H artemedes I dominated as holy, only for the speed shields, but once again would have done 2k more hps with a disc spec. =(
as it stands I rather play holy, but with other classes changes, as well as the OPness of tossing shields mitigating buggy hardmode enounters, its looking like my holy priest might just end up going disc yet again =( I wish they would just give disc some real heals. and cut pwS' balls off. right now, its viable, isn't nerfed at all, and if played right puts out a fuckton.

they got buffed, i'll sadly be back to shield spamming (15 vrs 30 seconds is meaningless) before you say it isn't viable I did it last night on maloriak for shits and giggles, yup 58% of my healing was shield spam, I dominated, finished with mana and I went out of my way to keep up pennance 4pc pom and actually cast POH. 4healed omni on 25 then went,, yup back to disc for H chimeron. H artemedes I dominated as holy, only for the speed shields, but once again would have done 2k more hps with a disc spec. =(
as it stands I rather play holy, but with other classes changes, as well as the OPness of tossing shields mitigating buggy hardmode enounters, its looking like my holy priest might just end up going disc yet again =( I wish they would just give disc some real heals. and cut pwS' balls off. right now, its viable, isn't nerfed at all, and if played right puts out a fuckton.

/sigh.

If you have the gear to support it maybe? In my gear (I'm working on Al'Akir/Neferion Normal, 10-man strict) bubbles eat up ~5-6% of my mana (I go from 100% mana to 94 or 95% mana when I cast it) Sure, rapture offsets that a bit, but If I try to spam that on 4+ people, my mana gets destroyed unless I'm being fed innervates and mana-tides.

Sadly I feel the complete opposite on what disc needs. I feel like TOO much of disc is healing based. I LIKE bubbles, and I think DA is a good concept, but it's very hit-or-miss depending on the fight. As it stands I feel like we could use another "mini" cooldown or something. I simply constantly feel like I dont have a button I'd really really like to have to keep up with the rest of the healers I run with. Then again, I'm doing fine on the meters so maybe not, but I constantly feel like I dont have an "Oh-S***" button I'd really like to have.

All in all, considering I dont use an AA build (I *hate* AA), this patch is basically an all around nerf for me.

Agreed. There is nothing good to come from this patch for disc priests in a tank healing role.
Shorter shields and longer DA don't affect us in the slightest. The barrier change does though. And it stinks.

I believe he was referring to the effect of being Disc in a 10 man. Raid support as a Disc is clunky at best and highly immobile...not to mention you go OOM pretty quick compared to Holy priests. No intelligent healer will ever just focus on Tank heals and nothing else...situational support is required unless you have highly competent and geared healers in your group.

When you think of these nerfs etc... think of a fresh raid group with sub par gear trying to progress through current content and how it will effect them.

People that think they know it all are annoying to those of us that do

I believe he was referring to the effect of being Disc in a 10 man. Raid support as a Disc is clunky at best and highly immobile...not to mention you go OOM pretty quick compared to Holy priests. No intelligent healer will ever just focus on Tank heals and nothing else...situational support is required unless you have highly competent and geared healers in your group.

When you think of these nerfs etc... think of a fresh raid group with sub par gear trying to progress through current content and how it will effect them.

Aye, this is what I meant. I dont have the extra druids or shaman around for mana-tide or innervates in 10-man, that's all I meant by it. In reading another post I'm inclined to agree that disc does feel clunky at the moment. In another thread someone pointed out how DA is either VERY strong, or VERY weak, depending on the fight. My issue with disc is that my performance sort-of caps out at a certain point. I can do everything perfectly, and simply by nature of the fight my DA will either be very useful, or very weak, with DA getting weaker and weaker as people improve and avoid more and more avoidable damage once the fights are learned.

I guess I shouldn't complain since I AM downing content, it just makes me a bit sad when I see my shaman friend gaining mana on Nef phase 2, when I burn through most of my mana in phase 2, especially when I realize that shaman are getting a buff (a much needed one mind you, in most cases at least)

Aye, this is what I meant. I dont have the extra druids or shaman around for mana-tide or innervates in 10-man, that's all I meant by it. In reading another post I'm inclined to agree that disc does feel clunky at the moment. In another thread someone pointed out how DA is either VERY strong, or VERY weak, depending on the fight. My issue with disc is that my performance sort-of caps out at a certain point. I can do everything perfectly, and simply by nature of the fight my DA will either be very useful, or very weak, with DA getting weaker and weaker as people improve and avoid more and more avoidable damage once the fights are learned.

I guess I shouldn't complain since I AM downing content, it just makes me a bit sad when I see my shaman friend gaining mana on Nef phase 2, when I burn through most of my mana in phase 2, especially when I realize that shaman are getting a buff (a much needed one mind you, in most cases at least)

Honestly, I agree. The lack of Innervates, and in most cases the requirement of raid splits on some fights makes mana a huge issue, especially for disc. Looking at the nef fight, on 25 for example, this is a brilliant comparison. Even if you're conservative on mana for the entirety of phase 2, and are strictly healing a tank (ie Nef tank which is usually my job/role), going into phase 2 with anything sub 90% mana is almost unbearable, due to the fact that the shadowflame breath hits so hard, and my guild tends to 6 heal it with 2 healers per platform, forcing me to HOH+Fiend to give me some kind of a return. Even then, going into P3 is difficult, once you're down to about 40% cumulative mana, and your resto shaman in your raid likely popped manatide sometime in P3, especially if you're pushing nef 2-3 shocks during p2.

One thing I did notice was that atonement healing can supply enough output to at least make healing the p2 portion of nefarian a bit easier. Especially if nef is at *5% or higher, you don't have to worry about people being topped off, but instead just keeping them above 50%, just in time for an electrocute, which then you can burn some mana to compensate.

Imho, I think disc needs a major overhaul. We went from shield spamming all WOTLK from 3.1 into cata, to get suckerpunched into our main ability that our whole tree rotates around, forcing us to utilize heals with an RNG proc of aegis to make up for lessened healing, with less cumulative regen than most other healing classes, and less buttons to press in regards to healing.

Out of curiousity, have any of you experimented with a 10/31/0 Holy Spec, delving 2/2 into Soul Warding, so you gain the bonus of PW:S with no cooldown, and Body and Soul, along with Holy Concentration? I've found that on AoE damage fights, such as H:Atramedes, this spec actually works better than the standard spec, being that you have better heals (in reference to chakra+POH+Mastery) for the AOE damage, and healing doesn't seem like "oh the target has WS, we're screwed".

If they're going to reduce shields to 15 secs to prevent pre-shield spamming they should revert the increased mana cost change.

No, they shouldn't. Because then you still have a Discipline Priest cycling half the raid before burst damage (so bring two!). It should be an option, and a great support buffer for those major hits on the people most likely to eat it, but not the only thing to be doing.

I'm not really liking the nerf to PW:B. Another Disc Priest and I had a great little system of taking turns putting up our barriers during red phase on Maloriak 25man. Worked out so well and CD was ready by next phase. Looks like we'll have to heal more now... (ugh we have to do our jobs).

No, they shouldn't. Because then you still have a Discipline Priest cycling half the raid before burst damage (so bring two!). It should be an option, and a great support buffer for those major hits on the people most likely to eat it, but not the only thing to be doing.

before burst damage

but not the only thing to be doing.

Uhhh, what?
Do you enjoy contradicting yourself?

You talk about pre-shielding happening before burst damage, then state it's the only thing we are doing. That really doesn't help your argument. In fact, I think it's pretty balanced as it is right now.

Last edited by Memoryz; 2011-03-10 at 10:55 PM.

"Gearscore is like a bikini, what it shows is suggestive, what it hides is far more important!"

No, they shouldn't. Because then you still have a Discipline Priest cycling half the raid before burst damage (so bring two!). It should be an option, and a great support buffer for those major hits on the people most likely to eat it, but not the only thing to be doing.

I believe that they should increase the HPS for all the Discipline Priest and bring them in line with other healers, because seriously our HPS is very behind other healers. If Blizzard wants to move Discipline Priests away from PW: Shield spam then they need to make it so that our HPS is completely underwhelming compared to PW: Shield. And the buff to Atonement is just rather like a band-aid on a giant gushing wound. Personally I find spending 5 talent points for Archangel too steep for the benefits. If they made the defensive ticks of Penance stack Evangelism, then nobody would ever actually make up the Atonement talent.

I'll have to see how the changes feel. I don't like the idea of 15s PW:S, but to be honest it probably won't affect me much. Due to the mana cost I don't tend to pre-shield anyone that doesn't need it to survive the next burst of damage.

Arguably, 15seconds is a very short duration especially for pvp. If you consider coming out of the gates in an arena, and PW:Sing a target for let's say 30k. In 15 seconds, if that shield pops, you can immediately re-shield them, giving them a pseudohealth of 60k+their base HP+mitigation, increasing the target's survivability that much more.

No, they shouldn't. Because then you still have a Discipline Priest cycling half the raid before burst damage (so bring two!). It should be an option, and a great support buffer for those major hits on the people most likely to eat it, but not the only thing to be doing.

Balance involves more than just PVE though. It needs to include solo and pvp. This will effectively double the mana cost for every situation where the priest wants to maintain a shield on themselves. Sure, you can regen that mana back in 15 seconds if you are doing absolutely nothing else, but what if you aren't. The shield duration should remain at 30 seconds for self-casts.